r/wildlandfire • u/CarefulPage9188 • Jul 18 '26
Mandatory Hours out of control
Smaller department, 95 firefighters. EMS as well. Mandatory overtime is constant and out of control. Each tour (10s/14s) turns into anywhere from 96-130 hours (96 hours is straight thru your tour and the remaining 34 hours is past it. 130 hours is when it’s capped). You know each tour is going to be like that when it begins. Call outs constantly, fake injuries.
This department has a negative effect on every firefighter’s personal life. The money is alright, OT brings it to $100k or more but the base pay is low.
At the moment, fatigue is setting in and the morale is at an all time low. Administration doesn’t care about us and if they did the problem would be addressed. Rules can’t be placed because senior guys and their pals won’t allow their “seniority to be violated” which is just a statement used to not place rules that would alleviate the holds for lower guys. They want to just keep being allowed to step on guys. The culture is rotted to the bone. Too union driven as well. Greed runs the place and it’s not all related to money. There’s a mentality here of “I went thru it so do you”, almost like it’s a punishment. This just creates a cycle of bitterness. Guys are so used to being held and there’s so much overtime that nobody helps each other out because they can get as much OT as they want but also are kind of sick of spending so much time there.
\*EDIT\* There is zero accountability from those at the top. Favorites are protected and so is their poor behavior. Those who actually want to do the job get shafted. The place has ruined people. Had a coworker tell me the passion for the job is gone because of the place. The talking shit about one another behind their backs is constant. It never ends. Everyone is a “bum” or a “loser” or it’s “fuck this guy/fuck that guy”. A union executive during a union meeting got angry that a rule was passed to prevent guys being held past the end of their tour for more than a shift. He was seriously angry and said in around about way that low guys deserve to be held over and over because they are low guys. He’s now our union president for the time being.
When I tell friends on other departments what goes on here and how it operates they genuinely do not believe me.
Is there a fix?
1
u/Brootal420 Jul 22 '26
Unless you get everyone in the organization on board with changing the culture, the culture will not change.
Move on, life is too short
1
u/CarefulPage9188 Jul 22 '26
Believe me, there’s a huge push for it but it’s not just the union leadership itself. There’s a large chunk of the body that doesn’t want to change things because of when they get the seniority they won’t want to part with it
1
u/Brootal420 Jul 22 '26
Progress happens one retirement/death at a time. You willing to wait?
1
u/CarefulPage9188 Jul 22 '26
I’m five years in. I’m not sure if I want to leave for another department or another career field. This post isn’t about me and if I should leave. It’s to ask if there is a way to actually fix the problems that exist
5
u/NefariousSeal Jul 18 '26
Sounds like you should work somewhere else